Written: Written at the end of 1899
Published:
First published in 1928 in Lenin Miscellany VII.
Published according to the manuscript.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1964,
Moscow,
Volume 4,
pages 193-204.
Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala and D. WaltersPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2003).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
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...In the introduction Kautsky gives voice to some extremely valuable and
apt ideas on the conditions that must be satisfied by serious and
conscientious criticism if those undertaking it do not wish to confine
themselves with in the narrow bounds of soulless pedantry and
scholasticism, if they do not wish to lose sight of the close and
indestructible bonds that exist between the “theoretical
reason” and the “practical reason”—not the practical
reason of individuals, but of the masses of the population placed in
specific conditions. Truth, of course, comes first, says Kautsky, and if
Bernstein has become sincerely convinced of the error of his former
views, it is his plain duty to give definite expression to his
convictions. But the trouble with Bernstein is his lack of precisely
this directness and definiteness. His pamphlet is amazingly
“encyclopaedic” (as Antonio Labriola has remarked in a
French magazine); it touches on a mass of problems, an agglomeration of
questions, but not on any one of them does it provide an
integral and precise exposition of the critic’s new views. The critic
merely expresses his doubts and abandons difficult and complicated
questions without any independent analysis after having scarcely touched
upon them. This brings about, Kautsky notes sarcastically, a strange
phenomenon: Bernstein’s followers understand his
book in the most diverse ways, whereas his opponents all understand it in
the same way. Bernstein’s chief objection to his opponents is that they do
not understand him, that they do not want to understand him. The whole
series of newspaper and magazine articles that Bernstein has written in
answer to his opponents has failed to explain his positive views.

Kautskybegins his counter-criticism with the question of method. He
examines Bernstein’s objections to the materialist conception of history
and shows that Bernstein confuses the concept of “determinism”
with that of “mechanism,” that he confuses freedom of will with
freedom of action, and without any grounds identifies historical necessity
with the hopeless position of people under compulsion. The outworn
accusation of fatalism, which Bernstein also repeats, is refuted by the
very premises of Marx’s theory of history. Not everything can be reduced
to the development of the productive forces, says Bernstein. Other factors
“must be taken into consideration.”

Verywell, answers Kautsky, that is something every investigator must do,
irrespective of what conception of history guides him. Anyone who wants to
make us reject Marx’s method, the method that has so brilliantly justified
itself and continues to justify itself in practice, must take one of two
paths: either he must reject altogether the idea of objective laws, of the
necessity of the historical process, and in so doing abandon all attempts
at providing a scientific basis for sociology; or he must show how he can
evolve the necessity of the historical process from other factors (ethical
views, for example), he must show this by an analysis that will stand
up to at least a remote comparison with Marx’s analysis in
Capital. Not only has Bernstein not made the slightest attempt to
do this, but, confining him self to empty platitudes about “taking
into consideration” other factors, he has continued to use
the old materialist method in his book as though he did not declare it to
be wanting! As Kautsky points out, Bernstein, at times, even applies
this method with the most impermissible crudity and one sidedness! Further
on Bernstein’s accusations are levelled against dialectics which, he
alleges, lead to arbitrary constructions, etc., etc. Bernstein repeats
these phrases (that
have already managed to disgust also the Russian readers) without making
the slightest attempt to show what is in correct in dialectics, whether
Hegel or Marx and Engels are guilty of methodological errors (and
precisely what errors). The only means by which Bernstein tries to
motivate and fortify his opinion is a reference to the
“tendentiousness” of one of the concluding sections of
Capital (on the historical tendency of capitalist
accumulation). This charge has been worn threadbare: it was made by Eugen
Dühring and Julius Wolf and many others in Germany, and it was made
(we add on our part) by Mr. Y. Zhukovsky in the seventies and by
Mr. N. Mikhailovsky in the nineties—by the very same
Mr. Mikhailovsky who had once accused Mr. Y. Zhukovsky of acrobatics for
making the selfsame charge. And what proof does Bernstein offer
in confirmation of this worn-out nonsense? Only the following: Marx began
his “investigation” with ready-made conclusions, since in 1867
Capital drew the same conclusion that Marx had drawn as early as
the forties. Such “proof” is tantamount to fraud, answers
Kautsky, because Marx based his conclusions on two investigations and not
on one, as he points out very definitely in the introduction to Zur
Kritik (see Russian translation: A Critique 01 Some of the
Propositions of Political
Economy[2]).
Marx made his first
investigation in the forties, after leaving the Editorial Board of the
Rheinische
Zeitung.[3]
Marx left the newspaper because he had to treat of material interests and
he realised that he was not sufficiently prepared for this. From the arena
of public life, wrote Marx about himself, I withdrew into the study. And
so (stresses Kautsky, hinting at Bernstein), Marx had doubts regarding the
correctness of his judgement of material interests, regarding the
correctness of the dominant views on this subject at that time, but he did
not think his doubts to be important enough to write a whole book and
Inform the world about them. On the contrary, Marx set out to study in
order to advance from doubtings of the old views to positive new ideas. He
began to study French social theories and English political economy. He
came into close contact with Engels, who was at that time making a
detailed study of the actual state of the economy in England. The result
of this joint work, this first inquiry, was the
well-known conclusions which the two writers expounded very definitely
towards the end of the
forties.[4]
Marx moved to London in 1850, and the favourable conditions there for
research determined him “to begin afresh from the very
beginning and to work through the new material critically”
(A Critique of Some of the Propositions, 1st edition,
p. xi.[5]
Our italics). The fruit of this second inquiry, lasting many long
years, were the works: Zur Kritik (1859) and Das Kapital
(1867). The conclusion drawn in Capital coincides with the former
conclusion drawn in the forties because the second inquiry confirmed the
results of the first. “My views, however they may be judged ... are
the result of conscientious investigation lasting many years,” wrote Marx
in 1859 (ibid.,
p. xii).[6]
Does this, asks Kautsky, resemble conclusions found ready-made long before
the investigation?

Fromthe question of dialectics Kautsky goes over to the question of
value. Bernstein says that Marx’s theory is unfinished, that it leaves
many problems “that are by no means fully explained.” Kautsky does
not think of refuting this: Marx’s theory is not the last word in science,
he says. History brings new facts and new methods of investigation that
require the further development of the theory. if Bernstein had made an
attempt to utilise new facts and new methods of inquiry for the further
development of the theory, everybody would have been grateful to him. But
Bernstein does not dream of doing that; he confines himself to cheap
attacks on Marx’s disciples and to extremely vague, purely eclectic
remarks, such as: the Gossen-Jevons-Böhm theory of marginal utility
is no less just than Marx’s theory of labour-value. Both theories retain
their significance for different purposes, says Bernstein, because
Böhm-Bawerk has as much right, a priori, to abstract from
the property of commodities that they are produced by labour, as Marx has
to abstract from the property that they are use-values. Kautsky points out
that it is utterly absurd to regard two opposite, mutually exclusive
theories suitable for different purposes (and, furthermore, Bernstein does
not say for what purposes either of the two theories is suit able). It is
by no means a question as to which property of commodities we are, a
priori (von Hause aus), entitled to abstract from; the question is
how to explain the principal
phenomena of present-day society, based on the exchange of
products, how to explain the value of commodities, the function of money,
etc. Even if Marx’s theory may leave a number of still unexplained
problems, Bernstein’s theory of value is a totally unexplained
problem. Bernstein further quotes Buch, who constructed the concept of the
maximum density” of labour; but Bernstein does not give a complete
exposition of Buch’s views or make a definite statement of his own opinion
on that question. Buch, it seems, gets entangled in contradictions by
making value depend on wages and wages depend on value. Bernstein senses
the eclecticism of his statements on value and tries to defend eclecticism
in general. He calls it “the revolt of the sober intellect against
the tendency inherent in every dogma to constrict thought within narrow
confines.” If Bern stein were to recall the history of thought, retorts
Kautsky, he would see that the great rebels against the constriction of
thought within narrow confines were never eclectics, that what has always
characterised them has been the striving for the unity, for the integrity
of ideas. The eclectic is too timid to dare revolt. If, indeed, I click my
heels politely to Marx and at the same time click my heels politely to
Böhm-Bawerk, that is still a long way from revolt! Let anyone name
even one eclectic in the republic of thought, says Kautsky, who has proved
worthy of the name of rebel!

Passingfrom the method to the results of its application, Kautsky deals
with the so-called Zusammenbruchstheorie, the theory of collapse,
of the sudden crash of West-European capitalism, a crash that Marx
allegedly believed to be inevitable and connected with a gigantic economic
crisis. Kautsky says and proves that Marx and Engels never propounded a
special Zusammenbruchstheorie, that they did not connect a
Zusammenbruch necessarily with an economic crisis. This is a
distortion chargeable to their opponents who expound Marx’s theory
one-sidedly, tearing out of con text odd passages from different writings
in order thus triumphantly to refute the “one-sidedness” and
“crudeness” of the theory. Actually Marx and Engels considered
the transformation of West-European economic relations to be dependent on
the maturity and strength of the classes
brought to the fore by modern European history. Bernstein tries to assert
that this is not the theory of Marx, but Kautsky’s interpretation and
extension of it. Kautsky, however, with precise quotations from Marx’s
writings of the forties and sixties, as well as by means of an analysis of
the basic ideas of Marxism, has completely refuted this truly pettifogging
trickery of the Bernstein who so blatantly accused Marx’s disciples of
“apologetics and pettifoggery.” This part of Kautsky’s book Is
particularly interesting, the more so, since some Russian writers (e.g.,
Mr. Bulgakov in the magazine Nachalo) have been In a hurry to
repeat the distortion of Marx’s theory which Bernstein offered in the
guise of “criticism” (as does Mr. Prokopovich in his
Working-Class Movement in the West, St. Petersburg, 1899).

Kautskyanalyses the basic tendencies of contemporary economic development
in particularly great detail in order to refute Bernstein’s opinion that
this development is not proceeding in the direction indicated by Marx. It
stands to reason that we cannot present here a detailed exposition of the
chapter “Large- and Small-Scale Production” and of other
chapters of Kautsky’s book which are devoted to a political-economic
analysis and contain extensive numerical data, but shall have to confine
ourselves to a brief mention of their contents. Kautsky emphasises the
point that the question is one of the direction, by and large, of
development and by no means of particularities and superficial
manifestations, which no theory can take into account in all
their great variety. (Marx reminds the reader of this simple but oft for
gotten truth in the relevant chapters of Capital.) By a detailed
analysis of the data provided by the German industrial censuses of 1882
and 1895 Kautsky shows that they are a brilliant confirmation of Marx’s
theory and have placed beyond all doubt the process of the concentration
of capital and the elimination of small-scale production. In 1896
Bernstein (when he himself still belonged to the guild of apologists and
pettifoggers. says Kautsky ironically) most emphatically recognised this
fact, but now he is excessive in his exaggeration of the strength and
importance of small-scale production. Thus, Bernstein estimates the number
of enterprises employing fewer than 20 workers at several hundred thou
sand, “apparently adding in his pessimistic zeal an extra
nought to the figure,” since there are only 49,000 such enterprises in
Germany. Further, whom do the statistics not place among the petty
entrepreneurs—cabmen, messengers, gravediggers, fruit hawkers,
seamstresses (even though they may work at home for a capitalist), etc.,
etc.! Here let us note a remark of Kautsky’s that is particularly
important from the theoretical standpoint—that petty commercial and
industrial enterprises (such as those mentioned above) in capitalist
society are often merely one of the forms of relative over-population;
ruined petty producers, workers unable to find employment turn (sometimes
temporarily) into petty traders and hawkers, or rent out rooms or beds
(also “enterprises,” which are registered by statistics equally with
all other types of enterprise!), etc. The fact that these employments are
overcrowded does not by any means indicate the viability of petty
production but rather the growth of poverty in capitalist
society. Bernstein, however, emphasises and exaggerates the importance of
the petty “industrial producers” when to do so seems to him to
serve his advantage (on the question of large- and small-scale
production), but keeps silent about them when he finds it to his
disadvantage (on the question of the growth of poverty).

Bernsteinrepeats the argument, long known to the Russian public as well,
that joint-stock companies “permit” the fragmentation of
capital and “make unnecessary” its concentration, and he cites
some figures (cf. Zhizn, No. 3 for 1899) on the number of small
shares. Kautsky replies that these figures prove exactly nothing, since
small shares in any companies might belong to big capitalists (as even
Bernstein must admit). Bernstein does not adduce any evidence, nor can he,
to prove that joint-stock companies increase the number of
property-owners, for the joint-stock companies actually serve to
expropriate the gullible men of small means for the benefit of big
capitalists and speculators. The growth in the number of shares merely
shows that wealth has a tendency to take on the form of shares; but this
growth tells us nothing about the distribution of wealth. In general,
Bernstein’s attitude to the question of an increase in the number of
wealthy people, the number of property-owners, is an astonishingly thought
less one, which has not prevented his bourgeois followers
from praising precisely this part of his book and announcing that it is
based on “a tremendous amount of numerical data.” And Bernstein
proved himself skilful enough, says Kautsky ironically, to compress this
tremendous amount of data into two pages! He confuses property-owners with
capitalists, although no one has denied an increase in the number of the
latter. In analysing income-tax data, he ignores their fiscal character,
and their confusion of income from property with income in the form of
salary, etc. He compares data for different times that have been collected
by different methods (on Prussia, for example) and are, therefore, not
comparable. He even goes so far as to borrow data on the growth of
property-owners in England (printing these figures in heavy type, as his
trump card) from an article in some sensational newspaper that was singing
the praises of Queen Victoria’s jubilee and whose handling of statistics
was the nec plus ultra of light-mindedness! The source of this in
formation is unknown and, indeed, such information cannot be obtained on
the basis of data on the English income tax, since these do not permit one
to determine the number of tax-payers and the total income of each
tax-payer. Kautsky adduces data from Kolb’s book on the English income tax
from 1812 to 1847 and shows that they, in exactly the same way as
Bernstein’s newspaper data, indicate an (apparent) increase in the number
of property-owners—and that, in a period of the most terrible
increase in the most horrible poverty of the people in England! A detailed
analysis of Bernstein’s data led Kautsky to the conclusion that Bernstein
had not. quoted a single figure that actually proved a growth in the
number of property-owners.

Bernsteintried to give this phenomenon a theoretical grounding: the
capitalists, he said, cannot themselves consume the entire surplus-value
that increases to such a colossal extent; this means that the number of
property-owners that consume it must grow. It is not very difficult for
Kautsky to refute this grotesque argument that totally ignores Marx’s
theory of realisation (expounded many times in Russian literature). It is
particularly interesting that for his refutation Kautsky does not employ
theoretical arguments alone, but offers concrete data attesting to the
growth of luxury and lavish spending in the West-European countries;
to the influence of rapidly changing fashions, which greatly intensify
this process; to mass unemployment; to the tremendous increase in the
“productive consumption” of surplus-value, i.e., the
investment of capital in new enterprises, especially the investment of
European capital in the railways and other enterprises of Russia, Asia,
and Africa.

Bernsteindeclares that everyone has abandoned Marx’s “theory of
misery” or “theory of impoverishment.” Kautsky demonstrates
that this is again a distorted exaggeration on the part of the opponents
of Marx, since Marx propounded no such theory. He spoke of the growth of
poverty, degradation, etc., indicating at the same time the counteracting
tendency and the real social forces that alone could give rise to this
tendency. Marx’s words on the growth of poverty are fully justified by
reality: first, we actually see that capitalism has a tendency to engender
and increase poverty, which acquires tremendous proportions when the
above-mentioned counteracting tendency is absent. Secondly, poverty grows,
not in the physical but in the social sense, i.e., in the sense of the
disparity between the increasing level of consumption by the bourgeoisie
and consumption by society as a who]e, and the level of the living
standards of the working people. Bernstein waxes ironical over such a
conception of “poverty,” saying that this is a Pickwickian
conception. In reply Kautsky shows that people like Lassalle, Rodbertus,
and Engels have made very definite statements to the effect that poverty
must be understood in its social, as well as in its physical, sense. As
you see—he parries Bernstein’s irony—it is not such a bad
company that gathers at the “Pickwick Club”! Thirdly and lastly, the
passage on increasing impoverishment remains perfectly true in respect of
the “border regions” of capitalism, the border regions being
understood both in the geographical sense (countries in which capitalism
is only beginning to penetrate and frequently not only gives rise to
physical poverty but to the outright starvation of the masses) and in the
political-economic sense (handicraft industries and, in general, those
branches of economy in which backward methods of production are still
retained).

Thechapter on the “new middle estate” is likewise extremely
interesting and, for us Russians, particularly instructive. If Bernstein
had merely wanted to say that in place of the declining petty
producers a new middle estate, the intelligentsia, is appearing, he would
be perfectly correct, says Kautsky, pointing out that he himself noted the
importance of this phenomenon several years before. In all spheres of
people’s labour, capitalism increases the number of office and
professional workers with particular rapidity and makes a growing
demand for intellectuals. The latter occupy a special position among the
other classes, attaching themselves partly to the bourgeoisie by their
connections, their outlooks, etc., and partly to the wage-workers as
capitalism increasingly deprives the intellectual of his independent
position, converts him into a hired worker and threatens to lower his
living standard. The transitory, unstable, contradictory position of that
stratum of society now under discussion is reflected in the particularly
widespread diffusion in its midst of hybrid, eclectic views, a farrago of
contrasting principles and ideas, an urge to rise verbally to the higher
spheres and to conceal the conflicts between the historical groups of the
population with phrases—all of which Marx lashed with his sarcasm
half a century ago.

Inthe chapter on the theory of crises Kautsky shows that Marx did not at
all postulate a “theory” of the ten- year cycle of industrial
crises, but merely stated a fact. The change in this cycle in recent times
has been noted by Engels himself. It is said that cartels of
industrialists can counteract crises by limiting and regulating
production. But America is a land of cartels; yet instead of a limitation
we see there a tremendous growth of production. Further, the cartels limit
production for the home market but expand it for the foreign market,
selling their goods abroad at a loss and extracting monopoly prices from
consumers in their own country. This system is inevitable under
protectionism and there are no grounds for anticipating a change from
protectionism to Free Trade. The cartels close small factories,
concentrate and monopolise production, introduce improvements, and in this
way greatly worsen the condition of the producers. Bernstein is of the
opinion that the speculation which gives rise to crises weakens as the
conditions on the world market change from unforeseeable to foreseeable
and known conditions; but he forgets that it is the
“unforeseeable” conditions in the new countries that give a
tremendous impetus to speculation in the old countries. Using statistical
data, Kautsky shows the growth of speculation in precisely the last few
years, as well as the growth in the symptoms indicating a crisis in the
not very distant future.

Withregard to the remaining part of Kautsky’s book, we must mention his
analysis of the muddle people get into through confusing (as does
Mr. S. Prokopovich, op. cit.) the economic strength of certain groups with
their economic organisations. We must mention Kautsky’s statement to the
effect that Bernstein ascribes to purely temporary conditions of a given
historical situation the dignity of a general law— his refutation of
Bernstein’s incorrect views on the essence of democracy; and his
explanation of Bernstein’s statistical error, in comparing the number of
industrial workers in Germany with the number of voters and overlooking
the mere trifle that not all the workers in Germany (but only males over
the age of 25) enjoy the franchise and that not all participate in the
elections. We can only strongly recommend to the reader who is interested
in the question of the significance of Bernstein’s book and in the polemic
around it to turn to the German literature and under no circumstances to
believe the biased and one-sided reviews by the proponents of eclecticism
that dominate in Russian literature. We have heard that part of Kautsky’s
book here under review will probably be translated into Russian. This is
very desirable, but is no substitute for an acquaintanceship with the
original.

Notes

[1]
Karl Kautsky. Bernstein and the Social-Democratic Programme.
A Counter-Critique.—Ed.

[2]Zur Kritik — Marx’s Zur Kritik der politisehen
Ökonomie (A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy). Lenin’s references are to the Russian edition of the book
published in 1896.

[3]Rheinische Zeitung für Politik, Handel und Gewerb (Rhenish
Gazette for Politics, Trade, and Manufacture)—a daily
newspaper that appeared in Cologne from January 1, 1842, to March 31,
1843. The paper was founded by representatives of Rhineland bourgeois
who were opposed to Prussian absolutism. Certain Left Hegelians were
invited to contribute to the paper. Marx became a collaborator in April
1842 and was one of the paper’s editors from October of that year. The
Rheinische Zeitung also published a series of articles by
Frederick Engels. Under Marx the paper began to take on a more definite
revolutionary-democratic character. The course taken by the
Rheinische Zeitung, and the great popularity it achieved in
Germany, caused alarm and discontent in government circles and led to
the vicious persecution of the paper by the reactionary press. On
January 19, 1843, the Prussian Government issued an order to close down
the Rheinische Zeitung from April 1, 1843, and to establish a
particularly strict, double censorship for the remaining period of its
existence.